


no hint of a smile

by sandpapersnowman



Category: Kick-Ass (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fights, Fix-It, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 01:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14533461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandpapersnowman/pseuds/sandpapersnowman
Summary: They stumble out onto the roof together. Chris is trying to get distance between them, so Dave won't let him.(Alternate Kick-Ass 2 resolution.)





	no hint of a smile

**Author's Note:**

> i legit started this like six months ago and intended for this to end very differently, and then when i picked it back up a few days ago it became this instead lmao... this could be Better but i'm tired of looking at it!!!
> 
> title from the wombats' [Here Comes The Anxiety](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/wombats/herecomestheanxiety.html)

Dave _knows_ he can get through to him. He shoves Chris sputtering and choking into the wall with his arm barred across Chris’s neck.

“Just listen to me for a second, Chris,” he pleads. He has a whole monologue planned to inspire Chris to return to either civilian life or vigilante work, but it’s thrown off when Chris’s face twists in disgust.

"Don't call me Chris."

Dave frowns. It’s gonna be like _that_.

"Okay. Red Mist."

"That's not my name either," he hisses, "and you _know_ that."

Dave's forearm presses harder into his throat.

"You're not a villain, man."

Chris wants to punch him, but he doesn’t have the leverage for it.

"Fuck you."

His face is red, starting to tinge violet.

"Let's talk about this," Dave urges. Chris is going to pass out soon if he keeps his weight on him like that, but, disgustingly, Chris is sure he wouldn’t let him. "This isn't you."

"Thanks, Dr. Phil," he grunts. He tries to jerk a knee up into Dave's side again, but he doesn't have the oxygen to spare.

"I know you," he says anyway. "We worked together for four months, we were _friends_."

"It was to give you to my dad."

"No, you gave him Hit Girl and Big Daddy. You didn't want to give me to him."

Dave doesn't have to remind him of that night, of his father's employees dragging Chris away kicking and screaming because taking Kick-Ass hadn't been part of the plan. He'd apologized over and over even while Dave was yanked into a van and beaten unconscious, because he didn't want any of that to happen, and Kick-Ass was supposed to stay safe. 

_That_ is who he is.

Dave leans away enough that Chris can breathe, and talk, but not enough he could get away.

"I killed your dad," Chris reminds him.

Even then, it sounds like he's trying to remind himself.

"I forgive you."

"No you don't," Chris laughs, and cranes his face closer to Dave's. "Did you know I watched? I FaceTimed my guys so I could watch your old man struggle and die."

Dave puts all of his weight back onto his throat and then some, his other hand grabbing Chris by his hair to pin his head flat again, the blunt _thud_ of skull on concrete shutting him up.

"Okay, I haven't forgiven you," Dave admits, "but you don't have to forgive me either, and I'm not letting you go until one of us is dead or you're acting like yourself again."

Chris laughs in his face again.

"Then just kill me."

"Fuck off."

"I mean it. Kill me, Dave. What do you have, a gun? Your batons? I'll stay still for you."

"Stop it."

"It'd feel good, wouldn't it? Beat my head in. Come on. You already said one of us is gonna die. Put me _down_ , Dave."

Chris has switched from struggling against him to _pulling_ on his arm, trying to bar it against his throat again.

There's a bitterness to the words, and Dave realizes it's not that he wants to be this way -- he just thinks that after what he's done, who he's hurt, the things he's encouraged and funded and _been_ , there's no going back.

"Chris," Dave whispers. He risks putting his face closer, almost bringing their foreheads together but not quite. "Please let me help you."

“Okay. Put me down,” he repeats.

Dave plays it literal and loosens his general force on him, so Chris is no longer on his toes against the wall.

He scoffs and tries to surge forward, maybe break Dave’s grip on him entirely, but Dave doesn’t budge -- _one_ of them has bulked up significantly since they were crimefighting partners, and, spoiler alert, it’s not Chris.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Chris asks.

It's not as mean as it could be, or should be. It sounds exasperated, not insulting.

"What do you mean?"

"After everything I did, you're still trying to help me," he says. "Are you really that fucking hard for the hero thing?"

Dave laughs, a surprised little bark. Chris joking is a good sign. He's missed it.

"We were friends," Dave reminds him. "Like, _good_ friends."

He doesn't mention how close he'd been to telling Chris who he really was. He doesn't mention how close he'd been to telling Chris a _lot_ of things.

“Sorry to break your heart,” Chris says, but it’s lost some of the bite, gone flat.

“You meant a lot to me,” Dave agrees. He swallows nervously, and consciously has to keep himself from looking at Chris’s mouth. They’re still… Really close. “You still do,” he admits on accident.

_Chris_ does _not_ not look at Dave’s mouth. Shit.

“Me too,” Chris says quietly. “You were…” He laughs at himself. “I was gonna say you were ‘probably’ my best friend, but you were my only fuckin’ friend,” he admits. 

If things weren’t so tense, Dave might laugh with him, but as it is, he just smiles. This is good; getting Chris to think about how easy and fun it was, _they_ were, is good.

Dave’s hand slides down through Chris’s hair so he’s cradling the back of his head rather than holding it to the wall, which is maybe more gay in practice than he had anticipated. Chris seems to notice, judging by his entire face going red from something that’s not exertion.

So far, Chris has responded well to him opening up and getting sappy. Maybe he can push it further without getting into weird territory. It’s worth a shot, right?

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Dave says. “You haven’t done anything you can’t come back from, y’know? You could be Red Mist again, or just get away from the hero stuff altogether. You know that, right?”

For a moment, Chris looks… Peaceful. Like he could drop everything and go back to being himself, the _real_ , non-Motherfucker him.

Then his face twists, and he tries to shove Dave off of him.

“You only want me to stop because you’re the _good guy_ ,” Chris sneers.

“No,” Dave sputters, “I swear, Chris, I --”

“Let go of me.”

“ _No_ , Chris, I want you to be happy,” he swears, but Chris is starting to wriggle out of his grasp.

“Take your fucking hands off me,” Chris hisses, but it wobbles.

He’s not acting angry, he’s acting upset -- he’s not pissed that Dave is trying to stop him, he thinks that Dave is lying about _caring_ about him.

He is lying, technically; Dave was pretty sure he was in love with Chris before everything went to shit. It’s worse, actually, because he’s pretty sure he still _is_.

“Don’t make me do this,” Dave mutters to himself. He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, because it’s a _plea_ , not a threat.

“Do it,” Chris says.

Chris is referring to Dave killing him.

Dave grabs him and kisses him instead, shutting his eyes once their lips smash together.

Chris finally stops trying to get away from him, but Dave doesn’t know if that’s good or bad; he’s frozen between Dave and the wall, and Dave is still holding him hostage, just in a very different way.

Maybe if he starts rambling as soon as he lets Chris go, it’ll cover his ass.

“I’m not trying to get you to stop because I want to be the hero,” Dave says, and this was maybe a worse mistake because he’s still close enough he can feel Chris’s breath speed up and shake against his lips, and Chris can probably feel Dave talking against his. “I’m trying to get you to stop because this is bad for you, and I _know_ you’re good, and I care about you.”

“Dave --”

He shouldn’t interrupt, but his eyes are still shut because maybe when they were friends he was just young and dumb and optimistic, and Chris didn’t feel it either, and now he’s just some asshole who kisses his enemies, so he may as well say everything.

“-- I don’t want you hurting yourself or thinking you deserve bad things, because you _don’t_ ,” he continues. “And I want you back.”

He meant to say _I want my friend back_ , or maybe _I want you to go back to being happy_ , and instead he fumbles it into the most loaded sentence he’s ever spoken in his miserable life.

“I mean,” he starts, weakly. _Shit_. “I want my friend back. I want you to be happy again.”

Chris still hasn’t moved away from him, or tried to. Dave can’t think of anything else to say besides _I love you_ , and even that’s such a jump from kissing Chris and accidentally implying they might have been together that he doesn’t want to do it. He’ll take _I love you_ to his _grave_.

“Dave?” Chris asks softly. “Are you… Was that all true?”

Dave groans at himself. He just wanted Chris to be _himself_ again. He didn’t want to -- okay, yeah, he wanted to kiss him, but not _now_ , in _this_ context.

“Yeah,” he admits. “But that’s -- ignore most of that. You --”

“Did you feel like that before?”

“Yeah, but -- _ignore that too_ , that’s not relevant, I was your friend _first_.”

“I felt the same way,” Chris blurts out. “When we were friends.”

Silence falls again, and Dave remembers they’re still extremely close.

He opens his eyes.

Chris looks… Flustered. He looks younger again, like he did when they met, despite the eyeliner and semi-pathetic facial hair. He looks like the Chris that Dave knew.

“Can we talk about it, at least?” he asks. “About you leaving behind the supervillain stuff, I mean?”

Chris swallows. God, he looks so innocent when he’s not shutting himself off and bitter and self-destructive. He looks his age, Dave thinks humorlessly.

“What would I do?” Chris asks, honestly. “The whole state of New York knows my name. I can’t live a _normal_ life.”

“You can change your name and you don’t have to live in New York,” Dave answers quickly.

New York is his home, but his entire family is dead, all of his current friends get paid to hang out with him, and he’d never be able to _really_ start fresh in the same place. Chris has to see that.

“There’s _warrants_ out on me, Dave.”

“We both know you know the right people to get out of those, dude.”

Chris laughs, but looks uncomfortably close to agreeing to this. God knows he’s got the money to pull it off and still live in the lap of luxury wherever he ends up.

“Would you come with me?” he asks softly.

Dave’s heart skips.

“What?”

“Would you come with me?” Chris asks again. “You could make sure I don’t get into shit again, and I -- I don’t have any family left. I can’t start over on my own, Dave,” he pleads.

He could. He has ties to New York, but on the bigger scale, it should be worth it to leave his current life behind to stop a supervillain.

...On the smaller scale, in this room, both of them still pressed together, both barely noticing that they’re still tangled into each other, Dave wants a second chance with this. If things had gone differently, Dave would have gotten up the guts to tell Chris eventually, because it was already eating him up inside, and if Chris felt the same, things would have been _different_. Maybe they would have both been happy.

“Yeah,” Dave says, and he feels lighter almost immediately. “I’d go with you. Wherever you want to be. I’d trust you not to start with, like, supervillain shit again,” he specifies, “but if you wanted to leave and you wanted me there with you just _because_ , I’d still go with you.”

Chris takes a big, shuddering breath, as the implication of Dave’s words settles in. Dave would give up everything -- New York, his remaining friends, Kick-Ass, _everything_ \-- to be with Chris in post-Motherfucker circumstances. He’s _offering_ it, offering to let Chris uproot them both and just _go_ , just so they can both get another shot at being a couple dumb teenagers in love.

“Okay,” Chris finally says. “On one condition.”

Dave’s swallows.

“What?”

Chris licks his lips.

“Kiss me again.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me on [my main tumblr](https://www.sandpapersnowman.tumblr.com) as well as my kick-ass liveblog/analysis/shitpost blog [here](https://www.chris-d-amico.tumblr.com)


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